"Great athletes with fast hands will automatically make successful boxers"

I don't believe this, do you? opcorn:

 

Surely, no one believes it. It takes years of learning a craft, of making weight & developing the discipline, of putting together so much, offensively & defensively. Nothing is automatic in the Theater Of The Unexpected.

Who said it, anyway?

 

Of course not. It helps to be a great athlete and to have fast hands, but there is sooooo much more to the game.

Also, I think "great athlete" needs defining.

Is an "athlete" someone who moves well? Or someone who moves like a block of granite, but takes punishment accordingly?

 

Would you guys say that to be successful, it is essential to put thought into what you're doing?

 

To be a successful boxer you need a hot body and you must mimic the videofilms of the 50s

 

Uuuuh, it's Very Hard to B "Successful" in ANY Walk of Life by just WINGING It...It's Essential to Put THOUGHT Into ANY Venture, Sporting or Otherwise...



REED:mj:

 

I agree with you.

So are we all agreed then that being athletically talented with fast hands is no guarantee of success, and that reaching the top of this profession requires real thought into how you go about your business?

 

No Doubt...

A Naturally Athletic Cat has to Know WHEN & HOW to Apply his Talents, N Order to B Successful...



REED:mj:

 

You can be the fastest most athletic guy on earth and still there is no guarantee you have the toughness, heart or chin to compete in professional boxing. Being athletic and fast would surely be an advantage, but there is a lot more to it than that.

 

Thanks guys, my agenda is over, as you were :kidcool:

 

Glad we could help. With what ever it is you're doing.

 

It's like saying somebody who can run really fast would make a successful wide receiver.

 

OH DEAR THIS IS AN AMIR RUSE>:kidcool:

 

:nono::nono:

 

:: Oh joy, another 'subtle' agenda driven thread! Anyway, here comes a convoluted answer Mr. Slice, but it pretty much represents my opinion on this....

I think to be successful you have to have a high level of boxing competence. Just being athletic is NOT enough, of course. Even IN athletics you need good technique training, etc. So of course you have to be able to box to a very high standard. But i think, coupled with great athleticism, what basically amounts at the world class level to basic competence will get you pretty far and much more than that it will allow you to look much better against C & B class opponents than you really are. I kinda think of athleticism (& power) as having a multiplier effect on differences in class, it really exaggerates them and leads to guys who aren't really THAT much better than opponents in terms of level or grade being able to dominate them & look special.

But Skillz payz da billz & skills REALLY determine what level you're on, even if the less athletic guys don't look as dominant beating the nondescripts. Obviously, boxing isn't as simple as grades and levels though, styles comes into it big time, too. But the above kinda explains my natural suspicion of athlete fighters, along with the basic fact that I don't enjoy their style at all.

 

Hey man, I admitted fairly quickly it was agenda-driven :: ::

But fair enough, I don't agree to be honest with you with the athleticism angle, but can certainly see where you're coming from with the power thing (and I agree with that part). I can see where you're coming from with both to be fair, but I don't agree with athleticism being much of a multiplier in the lower grades. Skill shows itself on all levels, great athlete or not.

 

Boxing is a sport full of intangibles. Heart, guts, perception {psychological and visual} are all key components, and none of those are necessarily visually observable phenomena

 

agREED...

Around these Parts, Alot of Fighters R Automatically DIMINISHED BECAUSE of their Athletic Gifts...Sure, Hand & Foot Speed is an ASSET, but it has NATHAN to do w/TIMING, ACCURACY or Effectively CONTROLLING Distance (Among Other Things)...

Having Quick Hands Means U Can GET OFF 1st, but it DOESN'T Guarantee U're Gonna LAND...DOESN'T Mean U're Gonna HURT the Guy if/when U Land....DOESN'T Guarantee U Won't Get COUNTERED into "Bolivian" Either...

Having Quick Feet Helps if U Want to RUN & Stay on the PERIMETER for 12 Rounds, but it Doesn't Help to BAIT your Foe into YOUR Preferred Punching Range OR to Set Up ANGLES...

REED GETS Stylistic Preferences, but it's SILLY to Hold a Guys Athletic Gifts AGAINST him, when Assessing his Worth as a Fighter...



REED:mj:

 

If you include size (height, weight, reach, power) into athletic talent TOO (which not everybody does) then I agree 100 %

 

Well said. Prime example is Pele Reid, built like a brick shithouse, fast as hell and power in both hands. Dude was so athletic he used to do the friggin SPLITS during pre-fight introductions. Yet he couldn't even win the British Heavyweight Title against Julius fucking Francis ::

I mean, some people have said they wouldn't give Khan credit if he beat Floyd and Manny in the same night, as it would be a victory for athletic ability over genuine skill. Should he slow down or something to make it fair? You can't hold it against him. Agreed 100%

 

Zab Judah to me is a classic example of a great athlete with limited skills.

He had fast hands, reflexes, and agility. Everything to see that the guy was a natural athlete. But he lacked the true SKILLS or KNOW HOW as far as applying them.

To me, Yuriorkis Gamboa is similar. His technique isn't that good, chin is always in the air, and his balance is terrible. Hence the reason he's been so protected.

 

I would agree with all of this. I 'd like to think I take fighters as I find them, regardless of style as much as possible. I mean I regard RJJ as a top 20 p4p guy, and a top 5 LHW OAT. And I regard Ali as the greatest heavyweight ever, and top 5 p4p.

I just genuinely don't rate Amir Khan very highly, I think he's gonna come unstuck again soon. But he'll also do well against guys with slow feet, guys who rely on fighting at close range or counter punchers who need something to react off etc because he has the style to beat those guys. As time goes by actually I think he would have given Hatton for instance allot of stylistic problems, because he has the foot speed to keep Hatton at range and the timing to punish him as he attempts to close it. It might well have had a similar dynamic to Haye-Ruiz that fight, though much more competitive.

I think Khan's a B class guy....if we really put our heads together and discussed how high we actually rate Khan i bet Slice's opinion and mine wouldn't be a mile apart. He just really likes watching him and I feel like vomiting up my gizzards.

 

Well I think Khan has the potential to beat some very big names in the sport, current superstars, without mentioning any names. So we're probably not on the same page with that one bro ::

 

I don't know of any world champion boxer who would have been a standout athlete in another sport. Maybe Mundine?

 

Well I'm not well versed in Rugby League, but from my understanding Mundine reached a pretty high level. Perhaps some of the Aussies could help me out here?

It's the wrong way round but apparently Wayne Rooney was a pretty decent boxer (as was Michael Owen too, surprisingly), and his brother was all-Ireland champion from what I remember. He has a good boxers build too and seems to have the mentality for it, but again that's guesswork.

 

Mundine played in the top-flight competition & was a good (not great) player, but did enough to qualify for this issue --- if you consider him as good a boxer as he was a League player. I don't.

 

I use this argument to contradict the 'all great usa heavyweights are playing in the NFL' argument.

I agree that 'it seems' like this could be true...that great athletes are sucked up into other pro sports in the us...but not all pro athletes are above 200 lbs...and to my knowledge, there isn't a single former world champion boxer who could have been a pro in any other sport ('cept Mundine). Not one. Not even a close example.

It doesn't make intuitive sense, but at some point you have to accept the empirical evidence as meaning more than speculation.

I saw a great quote something along the lines of "the easiest way to ruin an athlete is to make him run distance". I just looked for it and found something else here: http://jasonferruggia.com/the-unmaking-of-an-athlete-part-2/ Halfway down there is a statement about the Eastern Bloc countries knowing that they shouldn't train little kids to be sport-specific at a young age because it doesn't help them later on.

Well...in boxing (and wrestling), starting out young does seem to help. There are many, many examples of the Floyd, Mosley, DLH's who start out in diapers and go from there. Wrestling is even more dramatic. The thing about these two sports is that you can be extremely good in one or the other and suck at the standard sports like baseball, basketball, football, tennis..etc...

And because the facts back it up, I think it is fairer to conclude that being a 'great athlete' is detrimental to being a great boxer. Sure, there may be NFL guys who could be successful Supermids on up...maybe even world champs...but it is also possible that there aren't any. And the facts support the idea that there aren't any.

 

The biggest asset is the ability to take a punch.

 

Of course, BUT you can have great intelligence in the ring but have no skill whatsoever.
Being intelligent in the ring and any other Sport in this case will make you successful only if you have the other tools to fit the bill.

 

The Eastern Bloc system's based on Metveyev's (one of the founding fathers of block periodization) theory that sports conditioning must progress from the general to the increasingly specific. Ie a sprinter must build up a base of work capacity, general flexibility, strength etc, before they get into say sprint specific plyometrics. So to that extent, children are best being allowed to do a variety of things to develop their general motor skills rather than myopically focusing on one sport.

But it does NOT warn against learning sports skills early. Just learning things early to the preclusion of developing a general base of athletic co-ordination and conditioning. Putting specificity before the general is in place. Do we really think that Ray Robinson or Floyd Mayweather or George Foreman didn't also spend allot of time on the playground running, jumping, playing basketball, gridiron, tag, etc? You've over read into that point.

Especially because another basis of the Soviet/Former Soviet (/Chinese) system is the recognition that different athletes, with different attributes and mentalities are better suited to different sports. But it's not always the one the happen to go into, early if they aren't exposed to allot of different sports. How could it be? So by getting the kids to play a multitude of different sports they increase the chances of finding the one which their specific athletic attributes are suited to. Bear in mind this is done systemically, sponsored at the government level to find better Olympic athletes. This isn't to further any specific sport.

But the bottom line is still the same FOR BOXING because the more kids through the door a sport gets the greater the chance that the right athlete with the right fit will wander in. It's a numbers game for a specific sport. Without teachers guiding kids into the specific sports they're best suited to, the less kids walk through the boxing door and onto the basketball court/football field, the less chance another Ali or Tyson does, full stop. You're right it doesn't mean these particular kids (ie todays Ali or Tyson) necessarily make it as top NBA or NFL guys because their particular athletic gifts might not be a fit for that sport, but it doesn't detract from the talent drain on boxing.